


Prove My Point

by likeadeuce



Category: Avengers (Comic), Iron Man (Comic), Marvel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-15
Updated: 2010-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce





	Prove My Point

If Tony Stark has a fatal flaw -- and it is something he's wondered about lately; you can't be king of the hill and have a brain in your head without wondering what will cause your eventual downfall -- it might be his relentless desire to be liked. Not that there's anything wrong with cultivating the affection of others, per se. He's sure that schoolteachers and waitresses and mailmen do it all the time. But when your job requires making tough choices -- choices that are always going to be unpopular with someone -- then wanting everyone's approval, all the time, can, at best, lead to sleepless nights. At worst, it can bleed into your choices.

Tony likes to think that he doesn't let the desire to be popular guide his decisions, but sometimes he can't help hearing the echo of something Clint Barton said years ago. "Tony is that rare but special combination of a people pleaser and an asshole; he'll lie to you, steal a pretty girl from under your nose, punch you in the face, then tell you it was for your own good and beg you to love him for it." Clint said it in the context of a game, or an excuse for a game -- a set of elaborate rules that involved drinking and telling lies, a game that Clint had invented but that Tony always won (by everybody's count but Wanda's, who insisted that Steve always won because Steve never played).

The game ended and everyone forgot what had been said, except that Clint and Tony were the last to leave, and Tony ended up backing Clint into a corner and demanding, more and more aggressively, "You didn't really mean what you said there, did you? People don't really think that about me?"

"Way to prove my point, Shellhead." Clint slipped out of Tony's grasp and planted the fastest, slightest kiss on the side of Tony's mouth. It was the sort of thing Clint did, the sort that meant nothing, that Tony knew meant nothing, that got him a little bit hard, anyway. Clint was just a straight-up asshole, who didn't care if people liked him, and so, of course, they always did.

Clint always said the things that no one else would.

And he really knew how to throw a shield.


End file.
